Connections
by the queen of slurking
Summary: Companion to Reflections, but not necessary to read Reflections first. Each of the girls reflects on her romantic relationships over the course of the books. Set around the same time as Reflections.
1. Chapter 1

_You guys probably know by now, I am not Sara Shepard. If I was, I'd be working on The Lying Game or PLL 9. _

_**Connections**_

_**Aria**_

_**Ezra **_**was the one guy she really shouldn't have fallen for, given that he was her teacher. She realizes now that she probably liked him at least partly because he was her teacher-and therefore off-limits. Basic psychology says that people tend to want what they can't have. The chase, the pursuit, or the idea of getting what they shouldn't have, but desperately want. **

**He was a shoulder to cry on, so to speak. She told him about her dad's affair and he told her about his mom's affair. She felt like she could talk to him about anything, and he seemed like the ideal guy. Once you got past the fact that he was her teacher, of course. There was definitely some kind of connection, and maybe he didn't try to stop her for the same reason: they both wanted what they really shouldn't have.**

**She tries not to flagellate herself over it too much. After all, Ezra told her to look him up in a few years, and disappeared. Back then, Aria may have been upset about it. **

**Now, she thinks it's for the best. There was never anything real between them: a few kisses, some time stolen in his office at school. He left, and she could have put her life on hold to wait until she graduated to look him up.**

**Or, she could have moved on. Once Ezra was gone, the chances of him telling people he hooked up with his student were slim. While A did reveal it to Sean, few others would have known and that would have made it easier to move forward.**

**She doesn't think much about him nowadays. For all she knows, he's married now. **

_**Sean**_** overlapped with Ezra a bit. She does regret that she cheated on him with Ezra, and that he found out about the cheating from A, in a picture text message. **

**She feels bad about that, especially when she considers that Sean and his family took her in and gave her a place to stay after she decided to move out of home right after the scarlet A incident with Meredith. She thinks she really should have apologized, and wishes that Sean had at least allowed her to do so properly.**

**She wonders if Sean went out with her because he was on the rebound. Hanna and he had broken up not long before he and Aria got together, and that had made Hanna cooler towards Aria for a while. It seemed that only after Aria and Sean broke up that Hanna seemed to soften towards Aria.**

**She thinks about ultimately it was a good thing that she and Sean broke up, because they weren't too compatible. He was almost too perfect, and she preferred guys who weren't the cookie-cutter Rosewood type.**

_**Noel**_** took her by surprise. When he started being nice to her, and seemed interested, that was a change. She's sure he probably made fun of her back before she became friends with Ali and the rest of her clique.**

**She never expected that someone like Noel-who appeared to be a Typical Rosewood-would have hidden depths. Such as, he attended séances to try communicating with his brother, or that he even had a brother who had committed suicide.**

**When the rest of her classmates were taunting her about being a 'Pretty Little Liar', she expected him to join in. She never would have thought that he would take her away from it and apologize to her for what they were doing. **

**She also expected that he would make fun of her for trying to communicate with Ali somehow, as if she was trying to reach her spirit. **

**She remembers how he subverted many of her expectations: he turned out not to be some lacrosse boy who was just like dozens of others at school. She realizes that when she caught him and Alison kissing at the Valentine's Day dance, she jumped to conclusions that he had instigated it, and that he was being honest when he denied it.**

_**Aria **_**recognizes that the relationship she has with Noel is the best she's had since she's been back in Rosewood.**


	2. Chapter 2

Connections chapter 2

Emily

_Ben_ wasn't the best person she ever went out with. Emily considers his faults, and thinks about that she's grateful that they broke up.

Things with him were boring and routine. After swimming, they might sit in his basement, watching a movie and eating pizza.

And once he'd come across her and Maya kissing, he seemed hell-bent on trying to prove if she liked girls or guys. He threatened her, and almost assaulted her twice. If it wasn't for the fact that the first time, Toby witnessed it and stopped him, or that the second time she managed to knee him where it hurts most, who knows what could have happened?

She isn't sure if either of them really liked each other, or if they just went out because everyone else said they should.

Before they'd begun going out, they'd been friends, sort of. Being on the swim team and practising most days meant that the swimmers mostly got on fairly well, and several were good friends, while some others dated within the group.

Emily figures that she probably didn't like him a whole lot: they were able to split up so easily, and never really talked after that. He can't have liked her a whole lot either, since they both seemed to move on quite quickly.

_Maya_ was infinitely better for Emily than Ben ever was. They could be best friends, as well as a couple. Emily thinks of how Maya was willing to keep things at Emily's pace, and not try to rush her into making them public.

She feels bad for screwing Maya around, and that when she was sent to Iowa, she basically cheated the first day she was there. She remembers how things with Maya went downhill after she ran away from Iowa, returning to her family accepting her and welcoming Maya, and wishes things had gone differently. She wishes she'd been able to take it more easily, without questioning things.

She wonders how good it is that she and Maya broke up. She still misses Maya from time to time, and feels bad that they didn't part on good terms. Occasionally, she picks up the phone to send an email or make a call, then remembers that Maya probably wouldn't have wanted to hear from her.

_Isaac_ was also good for Emily, but in a different way. She remembers how he accepted her for who she was, not being disgusted that she had dated girls in the past.

She remembers how he supported her through her problems and treated her well. She also remembers how they moved too fast and slept together after only a short time, and hates to remember how that turned out: A somehow found out about it, probably told Isaac's mom and then let her ruin things. After that, things couldn't have been the same between Emily and Isaac again.

Emily hates that she played into A's hands by breaking up with Isaac, but she knew it was the right thing to do. If Isaac's mom hated her, that made it that much harder for them to go out, knowing she wasn't welcome in the Colbert household. Even while it was the right thing to do, it was obviously doing exactly as A wanted, and Emily hates that.

Emily tries to hate Alison, and Mona before her, for doing what they did as A to wreck Emily's life and ruin her relationships, as they believed Emily and her friends did to them. She feels more pity than anything, because both girls were obviously not well mentally. Regardless, she wishes she had told Isaac what A was doing. Isaac supported her and promised to help her through what was going on, and he could have helped somehow.

She remembers how she felt like she might have been overreacting, but decided now that she wasn't. When she considers that Isaac's mom cut her head out of a photo of them, and the hurtful things she said that night at Applebee's, she knows she didn't overreact. Anyone else would have had the same reaction.

_Emily_ decides that the best relationship she's had was the one with Maya, and regrets that she let A come between them.


	3. Chapter 3

Connections

Hanna

_Sean_ was great, but he and Hanna weren't quite on the same wavelength. Hanna remembers how perfect he seemed, and thinks that's a part of the reason they broke up.

She thinks that maybe a part of their relationship was based on popularity, not that they really liked each other a lot. She knows they did like each other, but maybe not enough.

When they split up, he managed to get over Hanna pretty quickly, and that hurt her. Especially when she considers that he and Aria Montgomery got together pretty quickly, only to break up five minutes later. Hanna hates that he broke up with Aria so fast, because it meant that her attempts to win him back had been wasted. Even while he and Aria had been together, she had wished they'd break up and he'd go back to her.

Maybe, she thinks, he didn't want a girlfriend. Not a long-term one, anyway. She remembers how long he and Aria were together for, and tries to recall who else he went out with after he broke up with Hanna. She can't remember seeing him with anyone else, but she was preoccupied with dealing with A. She considers that he went through two girlfriends in a matter of months, and figures he probably wasn't looking for a long-term relationship.

She wishes that when he broke up with her, he'd told her why. She would have liked to know why he left her, and thinks that she at least deserved that much. She figures it might have brought her some closure and helped her move on. At any rate, it could have stopped her from chasing after him when he was already moving on and clearly not interested.

_Lucas_ was a great boyfriend, if it hadn't been for the fact that Hanna was slightly too obsessed with popularity.

She remembers how she could act around him, more herself and relaxed. He didn't care what she wore or if she was perfectly made up: he liked her for her. She recalls how she didn't even use much makeup when she was with him, except to cover her scar some. She remembers how, during winter break, they went sledding together and had fun. That was all something she mightn't have been able to do in front of another guy, fearing she'd look like a dork.

He supported her through her recovery from the accident, and let her vent to him. Hanna thinks that the main problem was that popularity had been so important to her over the past few years that it continued to matter to her. That when she suspected Kate of planning to ruin her, she had to jump in and try to stop it from happening.

Lucas was great for Hanna, but they weren't quite on the same wavelength either. Hanna had been so focused on keeping her Queen Bee status that it cost her a boyfriend, and she wishes that hadn't been the case.

_Mike _had always just been Aria's younger brother. The one who liked crude jokes and behaving like a total pervert. The one who wanted to be popular, another Rosewood Day boy in a long line of Rosewood Day boys.

Hanna remembers her surprise at finding out that Make had liked her better than he'd liked Kate-after all, didn't everyone like Kate best? She also remembers her surprise at going out with Mike once and feeling like they'd just clicked. He wasn't serious like Sean had been, and he understood the things she did to stay popular. It didn't matter that he was younger than her, either.

She thinks about how she was surprised when Kate announced she liked Mike too, and how she instantly wanted to be the one who got Mike. She also remembers how she felt when Noel Kahn announced that the lacrosse boys had a bet going on whether Kate or Hanna would ask Mike to prom, and that she should have felt betrayed at being a part of a bet. Instead, she felt that it didn't matter.

She considers that she actually quite liked Mike, and remembers the surprise she felt when she realized she liked him as more than just a friend.

Hanna speculates that the one boy who was the best for her was hiding in plain sight, and she wishes she'd realized sooner, because they are right for each other.

She decides that her relationship with Mike is the best one she has had during her junior year.


	4. Chapter 4

Connections

Spencer

_Wren_ wasn't exactly her boyfriend, but she did sort of have a relationship with him. For all of three weeks, before he decided to return to her sister.

Spencer remembers how she got carried away, and over so little. Within a couple of weeks of meeting Wren, she already thought they had some kind of wonderful connection. She shortly began thinking about graduating high school early and downloading college applications so they could go to university together. She was already thinking about how they would live together and have a pet, and she wishes she hadn't been so naïve.

She remembers the anger she felt when he broke up with her, and she later found out that he had gone back to Melissa. Really though, she shouldn't have been all that surprised. What would a university guy want with a high school girl? Especially when it caused all the problems with her family. She thinks about it, and realises that a few kisses and secret meetings really weren't worth the effect it had on her family. Her parents basically thought she was worthless, and her sister thought she was a total skank. It really had been pointless-Melissa and Wren didn't even stay together that much longer before they called it off.

Wren wasn't the first guy she'd stolen from her sister.

_Ian _was another total mistake. Golden boy, sister's boyfriend. She kissed him, out of competition with Ali. They had their own little contest going, to see who could kiss more hot older guys than the others. Kissing Ian put Spencer in the lead but Ali was quick to lord the knowledge over her.

Bragging about it to Ali quickly became another mistake.

It quickly became a secret that Ali threatened to make public, a sort of foreshadowing to a few years later when she would hook up with Wren. The only difference was that when she hooked up with Wren, Ali wasn't around to be the bearer and trader of secrets. Instead, she had a probably-psychotic, all-knowing stalker who knew her every move-and thought. As with Ali, she'd have to keep the (then unknown) person appeased so they wouldn't say anything either. She would later find out that it was Mona who had been watching and following, and that she had had Ali's diary for years.

Spencer cursed Ali's interest in details. She's surprised that with all the hints Ali dropped, even with Melissa around, that no-one else really figured it out.

_Andrew_ was the best of the guys she'd been interested in. Ali wasn't around to disapprove in that way she seemed to favour, and he wasn't a boy her sister had dated before.

She considers this, thinking of how she and Andrew had been sort of the golden couple-funnily enough, it was much like how Melissa and Ian had been. Both hyper-ambitious, top-of-the-class students, sporty and into a dozen extracurriculars each.

Then again, it wasn't the most ideal of relationships. The competitiveness alone could have been enough to make them never want to talk to the other again. When Spencer considered all she'd been through with two stalkers pretending to be her best friend and people trying to kill her, it really wasn't so much of a surprise if Andrew couldn't handle it all.

Having people stalk and want to kill your girlfriend is more than a little unnerving.

He'd been a pretty good boyfriend, staying by her side when she thought she'd been adopted. He'd been concerned when she'd been thinking about moving in with Olivia, worried that it was moving too fast and she'd be hurt.

He had been right.

He had been the one to help and reassure her in the immediate aftermath of all that had happened in the Poconos.

_Andrew _was the best boyfriend Spencer had had.


End file.
